If Hooking we’re incentivized, what incentives would you want to see?

AssortedSorting

Myself personally, a Mori that can be acquired that isn’t just on the last survivor, perhaps sooner.

What would you want to see?

(Ignore the autocorrect in the title)

Seraphor

Hooking should already be incentivised. You get more BP from getting 8 hooks regardless of kills than you do from getting a 4K with 0-4 hooks, and killers don't actually want to increase their MMR if they can help it.

The problem is there's no feedback for that, and simply seeing a bigger number on the scoreboard at the end does nothing during the game itself.

What if the killers entity judgement was an active element in the match?

A new gauge on the killers screen that tracks the entities strength. It grows with things like interrupts, injuries, downs, hooks, and short chases, decreases with things like health states recovered and chases escaped, meanwhile hook rescues and sacrifices are neutral and moris/bleedouts are negative.

What the gauge does?

1. The higher it is the greater the BP multiplier for all actions. So as it grows throughout the match the greater value the killer gets for all their actions.
2. The basekit mori only unlocks after a sufficient amount of entities strength has been gained. Ideally at a level that requires a fair number of hooks to reach.
3. EGC activation automatically increases it to max.

This would make it patently clear how the game is intended to be played in a way to maximise your score. Killers can still choose to play in different ways (slugging/camping/tunneling) but they will see directly that they benefit less by doing so.

zarr

@AssortedSorting said:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3829607#Comment_3829607

This is more from the perspective of this post:

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/430521/slugging-tunneling-camping-limitation-system-concept

Were proxy-camping/camping made nearly impossible to perform, and tunneling much more reliant of hunting down a survivor, what would you want to see the act of Hooking itself do.

But as to your points on this post:

Devour Hope itself is a perk, and while it does offer competitive advantages, and visual flourish with the Mori, it lacks BP gains some might be interested in. It’s also designed around being a hex (and a perk), rather than something baseline. It’s a cool perk though I agree.

Incentives and disincentives are needed, but you need some degree of mechanical inability for some things too, to cover those that do things just for spiteful reasons, or simply due to it being the most efficient method.

Making perks that promote spreading hooks competitive, even meta, can help the issue, but causes a lack of perk diversity and a feeling that you need certain perks to be competitive. And if they’re the same strength as non-spreading perks, the non-spreading perks mean you play with less need to micromanage hook states/multiple chases, therefore being the path of least resistance.

As far as needing to redesign every perk:meta perk to be dynamic regarding hook states, I am not fond of that idea. It becomes convoluted and annoying to learn, making it harder to onboard new players.

The same sentiment with incremental/minute changes to stats for the Killer at base. The powerups need to be simple, obvious, and noticeable at a a glance, otherwise it makes it harder to onboard new players/does not feel impactful.

And the same goes for survivor methods of fighting back against those things.

This is more from the perspective of this post:

I see. Those are interesting ideas for anti-slug/camp/tunnel mechanics, I could see something along those lines work out fairly well. What I unfortunately cannot see is BHVR ever actually doing something that radical, they just aren't comfortable changing anything too drastic about the core formula. For multiple reasons, but one likely one being that they are mortified by the idea of losing whatever mysterious emergent quality it is that makes DbD be so successful when their other original projects just aren't.

Either way, yes, of course, if they would implement better base means of combatting camping and tunnelling, killer buffs would be warranted.

Devour Hope itself is a perk, and while it does offer competitive advantages, and visual flourish with the Mori, it lacks BP gains some might be interested in. It’s also designed around being a hex (and a perk), rather than something baseline. It’s a cool perk though I agree.

Mhm, the Devour suggestion obviously is meant more so as a "this is what you can do currently to help yourself with the game as it is" than something to say that we already have incentive enough due to its existence. But it really is pretty great, one of the most well-designed perks in the game, I'd encourage any player to use it more often.

Incentives and disincentives are needed, but you need some degree of mechanical inability for some things too, to cover those that do things just for spiteful reasons, or simply due to it being the most efficient method.

Absolutely, we have long seen that the "carrot" alone does not deter players from going for the most reliably effective killing strategies that are camping and tunnelling; on top of more or less soft incentives there have to be hard mechanical changes that change how effective they are.

Making perks that promote spreading hooks competitive, even meta, can help the issue, but causes a lack of perk diversity and a feeling that you need certain perks to be competitive. And if they’re the same strength as non-spreading perks, the non-spreading perks mean you play with less need to micromanage hook states/multiple chases, therefore being the path of least resistance.

Again, the idea very much is that alongside such perk changes, moderate mechanical nerfs to camping and tunnelling would be applied, such that between those adjustments to these strategies and the strength of perks that discourage them, they wouldn't be the most clearly and easily effective route anymore. Mind you, I do think camping and tunnelling have their place in the game, they are integral even to its gameplay appeal in my opinion. But currently they are just too blatantly the most effective strategies while also simply being too effective, particularly against uncoordinated groups which constitute the overwhelming majority of the playerbase. Rebalancing is in order, and perk design could be part of that equation, not least because we know BHVR for better and worse like to use perks as bandaids for base balance concerns.

As far as needing to redesign every perk:meta perk to be dynamic regarding hook states, I am not fond of that idea. It becomes convoluted and annoying to learn, making it harder to onboard new players.

That's fair, these restrictions are very much something that is readily understood among experienced players (they know what "camping" and "tunnelling" is, why perks that benefit from not doing it would be good, and how to best use them), but isn't very intuitive for new players to build and play around. But I do think having at least some really strong perks that actively discourage camping/tunnelling is perfectly sensible and feasible, and the restrictions could also be as simple and clear as "this perk is disabled once any survivor dies", an idea BHVR had already picked up on with Ruin and that I think is one of the best ones as it not only discourages camping and tunnelling but also helps make the 3v1 gamestate be less skewed in the killer's favour in general.

The same sentiment with incremental/minute changes to stats for the Killer at base. The powerups need to be simple, obvious, and noticeable at a a glance, otherwise it makes it harder to onboard new players/does not feel impactful.

I agree that these things need to be simple, obvious and tangible precisely because they are meant to incentivize/disincentivize certain behaviours, and have to motivate players. That said, not only are there of course plenty of ideas that follow those lines and BHVR can also employ visual and sound notifications to more clearly communicate them, but to an extent these changes are also meant to simply make those behaviours be less beneficial. A player does not have to know how Bloodlust works to benefit from it, and conversely in the instance of using this mechanic as a means of rebalancing camping/tunnelling, a player does not have to know how exactly Bloodlust changes when they camp/tunnel to not benefit from it as much as they otherwise could. It will simply nerf Bloodlust for them if they do camp/tunnel and as a result make camping/tunnelling somewhat easier to deal with for survivors, and over time such adjustments would also permeate through the collective playerbase's "consciousness", and it would more widely become intuitively understood that you can benefit from not concentrating on individual survivors as much.